The Closest Thing
by i was a controversy
Summary: /"Looking back on it now, Boq understands that it was never truly love."/ And is it Gloq, or is it Bessa? Or is it just our favorite pitiful Munchkin boy all on his own, in the end? You decide. :)


**The Closest Thing**

**Summary: **

**/"Looking back on it now, Boq understands that it was never truly love."/ And is it Gloq, or is it Bessa? Or is it just our favorite pitiful Munchkin boy all on his own, in the end? You decide. :) **

* * *

**001.**

She was so eloquent, when she wanted to be. Her words were an intoxicating slur or a haunting melody, the cheerful prattle of songbirds or the seductive purr of the femme fatale incarnate.

He could be so powerless around her.

Yet she could make him feel so masculine, so valiant. It was an exhilarating feeling—an unnerving feeling—one that he'd never felt before and probably would never feel again in the same way. So he figured he should take advantage of it—for what harm could that do? What harm could _feeling _do? What's so wrong with _feeling_, especially feeling something like this? A feeling this strong, this captivating, simply had to be love, he thought.

And so he was powerless.

This internal submission, of course, always occurred while he was still entranced by her eloquence, while he was caught listening to the inauspicious tune of her voice.

**002. **

Her beauty was unparalleled.

It was a beauty that he felt, at the climax of his emotional entanglement, could only be fully understood by he. For others had called her beautiful before, he thought, in their ways, but not like he did. Her beauty seemed to take on a whole new form in his eyes.

He was so bewitched that he slowly became unable to describe her.

He found it hard to recall, as time passed, the color of her eyes—their _real _color—the true contour of her face, the shape of her nose that he'd always found so frustratingly perfect, even though it wasn't. All he could conjure up was that he'd always found her irrevocably beautiful, even once he'd lost her, even as the time trembled heavily by and she grew farther and farther away from him.

All he knew was that she was beautiful, undeniably. And it didn't matter how hideous she was; she'd always be beautiful, in some way, to him.

And that was love, he decided.

**003. **

He was always something secondary, in her world, which seemed odd, because she grew increasingly imperious in his, monopolizing his entire being with her presence in him, even when she wasn't present at all.

Her vigor pervaded his soul more and more each day, until he was quite afraid she would protrude out of him as if he were impaled with her love, or her…something. Whatever it was she pervaded him with.

And yet he wasn't ever sure of the effect he had on her. He had to affect her in some way, of course. He loved her.

He loved her?

She was everything to him, whether he approved of that predicament or otherwise.

But he was always secondary, in her world; she was so selfish, so blinded.

He never minded selfishness in a woman, or at least, not this one. He figured she had her reasons. After all, he loved her.

He loved her?

He loved _her_?

He kept looking back and forth between the two faces over either shoulder, he remembers, at the Oz Dust Ballroom. He was always looking back and forth between them, and he never seemed to catch what was right in front of his nose.

It became rather noxious, actually.

**004. **

The abhor he reserved for her was somewhat special.

He hated the woman, and how she made him move, how she controlled his every thought, how the only ounce he had left of free will in the back corner of his mind had only the strength to mutter once in a while, almost inaudibly, in his ear: _Boq. She's not even __**here **__anymore._

And yet she had the audacity to infuse herself into him, permanently, even after she'd been gone for so, so long. She had the gall, he decided, to encompass each tiny cavity in his hollow, tin body, fill the empty void where he'd once had a heart, where he'd had the capability to love her.

Where he'd…loved her.

He'd loved her?

He'd never considered, he realizes now, the possibility that perhaps _he _was to blame. Perhaps he was the oblivious one. Perhaps, instead of considering himself the victim, even now, he should ponder antagonism. Perhaps he wasn't the one led astray; perhaps he deceived her.

He certainly deceived her.

But he loved _her. _

But he loved her.

He kept looking back and forth.

He realizes that both positive and negative forces hold some magnetism. The ultimate attraction, the ultimate connection, is determined by _his _magnetic charge. _He_ has to decide.

He realizes that there was, in fact, one direction that he was always pulling towards. He just preferred to be neutral; it had always been safer that way.

Indecision, he realizes, is a decision in and of itself.

And now his heart is gone.

**005. **

He had to have loved her.

In the forest, he chops away. It's raining, a heavy downpour that rusts his body further with every synthetic breath.

Every time his axe comes down, he chooses one of two different conclusions, alternating, methodically, artificially.

His empty chest aches, and it rusts.

_I loved her. _

_I loved __**her. **_

_I loved her. _

_I loved __**her. **_

She was so eloquent, when she wanted to be.

Her beauty was unparalleled.

But he was always something secondary, in her world.

He detested her.

But there was so much _more._

He rusts.

He rusts.

He rusts, and he realizes that he never knew love—not ever.

Looking back on it now, Boq understands that it was never truly love.

And as he finally rusts to immobilization, and he's unable to turn his head in either direction anymore, he regrets that he was so delusional, and indecisive, and a stupid, stupid, stupid small-minded Munchkin boy who never even loved with that giant heart of his. He never even loved.

It's too late now, and Boq realizes that it was never truly love, but he thinks, regrettably, that the eventual magnetic attraction that he'd always misunderstood, the peculiar tugging sensation that still played maliciously at the seams of the empty cavity once holding his heart, might have been the closest thing.


End file.
